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A Spirit That Goes to the End of the Line

by Garry Flake.

LDS Business College
Devotional

November 4, 2008

Well, brothers and sisters, I’m
really grateful to be here. I’m grateful to have come and heard that beautiful
number. I hope you’re going to do a CD. I’ll buy the first copy, if you’ll do
it. I just thought it was beautiful. And if I could share with you—it’s just
good to be with those that I can see, and those that are, I understand up on
the ninth floor, Brother Herman in my ward and others, just to feel the Spirit
of being here with you at LDS Business College. Thank you for coming this
morning, and I hope that I can share with you just a few stories, some
pictures, and you can have a feeling and appreciation for what the Church does
worldwide.

It all begins with what they just
sang, doesn’t it? That we are children of our Heavenly Father—a Heavenly Father
who knows each one of us by name, and where we are and where we live and our
needs, and He knows the needs of many people around the world. And then He
realizes that we can reach out and help one another.

From the 26th chapter
of 2nd Nephi, I thought of this scripture as these young men were
singing. For he said, “He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his
goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black or white, bond and
free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto
God, both Jew and Gentile.” (v. 33) I think the question then, comes to us: If
our Heavenly Father has said through his prophet that all are alike unto
Him—there’s no distinction, everyone is equal—then we have to ask ourselves the
question: Are all alike unto me? Do I treat everyone the same? Do I strictly
adhere to the same teaching?

President Monson has said so
aptly: “Along your pathway of life, you will observe that you are not the only
traveler. There are others who need your help. There are feet to steady, hands
to grasp, minds to encourage, hearts to inspire, and souls to save.”

You know, during the last 22
years, the Church has reached out in a very vigorous way, worldwide, to assist
people. Now, it has been a real success.
It has been a wonderful thing to do. And as was mentioned, the Church has
reached out in 167 countries. I’ve had the privilege of being in 87 of those
countries, and I have found that the members of the Church there have made a
difference in the lives of their neighbors and friends.

Just two or three little
observations, and then I’ll show you some pictures. I’ve determined that we are
successful in what we do because we are part of the inspired Welfare Services
Program of the Church. The whole essence of welfare is self-reliance—that we go
to school, that we learn, that we support ourselves, that we take care of our
own needs. And then we turn around and we reach out as far as we can to help
others. So the Church is successful in its emergency response and its
humanitarian work because we adhere to the same principles as Welfare Services.
With our storehouses, with our supplies, with our members that are so willing
to donate time and effort, we can reach out at lightning speed. When some
organizations are determining what they might do or what the needs are, we’ve
responded. We’ve been able to place trucks of goods just outside the footprint
of a hurricane, and then have been able to move in immediately.

Ken Hackett, who is a good friend
of mine and executive director of the Catholic Relief Services worldwide, said
to me once, “Wherever we go, the Mormons are always there, and they’re usually
there before we are.”

I said, “Can I quote you?” and he
says, “Yes. I think you’ll quote me whether I say you can or not.” We are
there, and we’re grateful to be there. And President Monson and others are
generous, as the resources of the Church are established, so that we can do
that. And the members of the Church are so very, very generous.

The assistance that we do
worldwide doesn’t come from a government grant we receive or from other funds.
It comes just from members of the Church across the world donating just a
little extra—first of all donating as they should to the fast offering funds of
the Church, and then donating a little extra to the Humanitarian Fund. And
those little extras go together to allow us to respond in a very effective way,
very often and usually not with cash directly, but in kind and assistance as it
happens. We have distributed hygiene kits and school kits and quilts and
blankets and food boxes and medical supplies.

The second observation I have made
is that everything we do has a spirit that goes to the end of the line. How do
I know that? Because I have been there. I have had the privilege of
representing you in the distribution of these goods on the other end of the
line. And as you give a hygiene kit to someone in need, there’s a spirit to it.
Besides the toothpaste and the bar of soap and other things that are in it,
there’s a spirit that carries all the way to the end of the line, because of
the sacrifice of Church members making it possible.

The third observation is that
people around the world are grateful for what is done for them. People want to
care for themselves. Most people aren’t asking for a handout, and people are
very, very grateful. They have said, “Will you please go home and thank those
that have made the difference?” So you’re part of that group that I would say
thank you to for making the difference.

President Marion G. Romney gave a
very wonderful quote when he said, “There’s an interdependence between those
who have and those who have not, and the process of giving exalts the poor and
humbles the rich. Both are sanctified.”

So we have the givers and we have
the receivers, and both are sanctified and both are edified. I’d like to tell
you a little bit about the givers and a little bit about the receivers. Out at
the Humanitarian Center—and if you haven’t been there, particularly if you’re
from another country or out of state, sometime you ought to have a tour and
just see the items that come together and the things that go out. They’re
packaged, and there’s a message that they come from The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. We don’t put proselyting packets in it; we don’t put
invitations to attend meetings. It’s just pure humanitarian help. Of course we
hope that this will help people come to Christ, and that they could receive the
saving ordinances. But we don’t do anything as an ulterior motive. It’s an
Ammon approach. It’s feeding the sheep. It’s tending the horses, and then
waiting when the king calls you and the work goes forward. We have so many that
do so much.

There’s a little note came on this
quilt: “Hi. We’re from Ivins, Utah.
This is a little town [they said] that’s about the size of your family pet.
It’s down near St. George. But we’re some of the nicest guys that live in the
state of Utah.
We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We worked
long and hard on this quilt. We got poked by needles and cut by scissors, but
we did it to help people in need. We hope this makes a difference.”

And it does make a difference.
Young Women make quilts. Do you know, we have shipped literally thousands of
quilts. A blanket is a wonderful gift, but the quilt carries a message all the
way to the end of the line. I remember one time out to the Humanitarian Center
of seeing another little note on a quilt that had the most clashing colors of
red and orange I had ever seen. A little boy had penned a note and he said,
“Whoever gets this quilt, I hope you like it because I picked out the material
all by myself.” There is a spirit that really goes to the end of the line as
these things happen.

I remember one time out to the Humanitarian Center helping a woman in the front
door, and I said, “What have you brought us today?”

She said, “Thirty-eight baby
blankets, and I made them all this week.” She said, “I’ve sewed and I’ve sewed
and I’ve sewed. My husband went on a trip. It’s an addiction. I wish he would
have taken the sewing machine cord. Oh, not really.” And then she just drops them
on the counter and out she goes.

I was there when another wonderful
group of sisters was there and I stepped over to them. I said, “What have you
brought?”

They said, “We want to tell you
about what happened at home first.” And then they said, “We are the stake
Relief Society presidency in central Utah,
in the little town of Genola,
Goshen Utah Stake. And they said, “We’ve put a quilt on every Tuesday morning
at our stake center and anybody who wants to come in and put in a few stitches
or catch up on a little bit of gossip or anything, we’re just grateful to have
them stop by.”

“But,” they said, “there’s a
special sister in our stake that we wanted to come. She was depressed. She was
discouraged. She would hardly leave home. She wouldn’t get up and get dressed.
It was a challenge for her and a challenge for her family. We said, ‘Come over
and help us.’ She said, ‘Oh, I think I’d ruin the quilt.’

“So after about the third time,
she said, ‘Okay, I’ll come and I’ll watch.’ So we sent the word out to all of
the sisters that we knew were regulars, ‘When you come and you quilt, just let
those pieces of yarn lay, don’t pick them up, because we think we have somebody
that will pick up the yarn.’”

And then they said they asked her
to do that, and she said, “Well, I guess I could do that.” And so she picked up
the yarn, and then she became a regular yarn picker-upper, and then later she
began to quilt.

Do you know, a few months later I
saw that same group of sisters out to the Humanitarian Center
and I said, “How’s my sister that you’ve been helping out?” I never knew her
name.

They said, “Oh, she’s just
wonderful. She’s moved from our community now, but she still sends packages
back of goods to come into the Humanitarian
Center.” What we do to
help others blesses us. It makes a difference for us, doesn’t it?

The school kits have been a wonderful
gift. I remember one time taking the ambassador for Kenya and his wife through the Humanitarian Center. She took the school kit and
dumped it all out, pencils and paper and scissors and erasers. She said, “I
wish I could have had one of these when I went to elementary school under a
tree in Kenya.
Would you send one of these over for every student in Kenya?” Well,
we send out about half a million a year of these.

I don’t know if we have anyone
here from Haiti,
but Haiti’s
a country with a lot of challenges. The minister of education from Haiti was here
at the Humanitarian
Center. She saw the
school kits. She had an idea. She went home and she talked to our area leaders,
and she said, “Could we have school kits?” We’ve shipped 100,000 school kits to
Haiti.
And then we’ve shipped the components of another 100,000 kits so that our
members of the Church in Haiti
can have the privilege of putting them together and getting them out, so that
we can have that kind of a young man, who doesn’t have paper and pencils, to
have something to work with.

Isn’t it marvelous that we are
able to reach out? We provide food. We’ve done a lot of food boxes,
particularly with the hurricanes that we’ve had lately. These are groups that
come together and box food, and as that box of food is opened up, they realized
that it is often product that has been produced on our farms, has been canned
in our canneries, has been boxed in our storehouses and it’s been given to
them. And there’s a spirit that goes all the way to the end of the line.

I want to show you about some of
the other things that we do. Let me tell you just one story, and then we’ll
talk about the measles campaign. These boxes of food are reminding me of an
experience that we had in El
Salvador not long ago—oh, several years ago.
There was an earthquake in El
Salvador. We have sixteen stakes, or we did
at that time, members of the Church in El Salvador, and many, many in
need. Following the lead of area leaders and the approval of the Brethren here,
we set out an airlift of food boxes and hygiene kits to El Salvador.
Then the word came back to us from a man by the name of Roberto Kriete,
chairman of the board of Taka Airlines, the regional airlines in Central
America, where he said, “Anything you need to get into El Salvador, you take to
my terminal in the Los Angeles Airport, and we’ll bring it down, space
available.”

That was a wonderful offer.
Airlifts are expensive. So we began to put pallets down there, and they began
to put them on their planes, and it went down and it blessed members of the
Church and it helped the community, and several months later I was invited into
El Salvador along with a member of the Area Presidency, at an appreciation
dinner for those that had done a lot to help with the earthquake. And as I was
there representing the Church, my fortune was that I was seated right next to
Roberto Kriete.

I said, “Mr. Kriete, we are so
grateful for what you did to help us get our goods into El Salvador. Do you
know that you took in the equivalent of seven truckloads of goods for us?”

He said, “I know that.”

I said, “You also have to know
that there was a little bit of jealousy with some other humanitarian
organizations, that you were favoring us.”

He said, “I know that as well.”

I said, “Why would you do us the
honor?”

He said, “Three reasons: First,”
he said, “when you brought that first planeload of goods into El Salvador,
they brought me a hygiene kit and they brought me a box of food. And I looked
at it, and I said this is exactly what our people need right now. I knew I
would be bringing what they need and I wouldn’t be hauling junk on the
airlines.”

I said, “What’s the second
reason?”

He said, “Well, the second reason
is kind of personal. My family and I landed in Las Vegas, rented a mini-van, saw the sites
up through Utah,
went to Yellowstone, flew back to El Salvador. No
one really knew who we were. But as we crisscrossed across the state of Utah and elsewhere,
people were so friendly that even my children started to say, ‘Well, Dad, it’s
those friendly Mormons again, isn’t it?’”

And I thought, I thank the Lord
for all the friendly Mormons across the state of Utah, and the assistance we give.

I said, “What’s your third
reason?”

He said, “Well, that’s the most
important of all. My third reason is Sam Pace.”

And I said, “Who is Stan Pace?”

“Well, he’s one of you that walks
the walk. He doesn’t just talk the talk. He’s a consultant with a company that
helped me restructure the airlines. He’s a marvelous man. He’s a good father. I
think he helped me restructure my family more than anything else. I would have
done it all for Sam Pace.”

And I thought, I am so grateful
for members of the Church that make these kinds of opportunities happen, that
we were able to build that kind of friendship and that kind of assistance.

Let me tell you about the measles
campaign. You know, this has been a really exciting experience. We want healthy
children around the world, and about the year 2000, the World Health
Organization said, “You may not hear about measles in the United States very
much anymore, but there are 47 countries around the world where we still need
to get children vaccinated.” Only about 50% were vaccinated, and it was
resulting in about 900,000 worldwide deaths from measles, from the most
vaccine-preventable disease there is. And so World Health and Red Cross and UNICEF
and other organizations came to the Church and said, “Would you help fund
vaccinating children—it’s going to cost about a dollar a vaccination—so that we
can catch up around the world and get children vaccinated, and we can cut this
mortality rate from about 900,000 a year to less than 100,000 in a ten-year
period.”

I went to Zambia at the
direction of the Brethren and observed this, and recommended that we do it. But
then the most wonderful part of it all was that when President Hinckley
approved this, with the vision of a prophet, he said, “Let’s not only put money
towards doing this, but wherever we have members of the Church, let’s have them
be a voice in their community of telling others that we can vaccinate our
children. Can they help get the word out?”

And so, five years later, 35-some-odd
countries later, 60,000 Church volunteers have helped get the word out. They’ve
marched in parades, we hired a town crier in Benin to get the word out, our
members in Nigeria put the aprons on and helped man the vaccination posts,
other members put on a badge and started going out door to door. We have had
thirty couples go out in Africa on a short-term basis and organize members of
the Church, because we want it to be a local initiative of the Church that they
do. We had the Primary children sing to us in Nigeria, and then all roll their
sleeves up and receive their measles shots. And it’s not very much fun.

But the Church has made a real
difference. In Benin you receive your vaccination card, and in Nigeria and many
other places around the world your thumb is painted to show that you have been
vaccinated. It has made a marvelous difference.

I can think enough to suggest that
maybe we put money towards it. But I’m grateful for President Hinckley and the
Brethren who said, “Let’s put our members to doing this.” It was reported in
meetings I was at a month ago that there were 198,000 deaths in 2007. We have
dropped the mortality rate on an annual basis from 900,000 worldwide to
200,000, and we’re with them for the haul of going on down. There’s another
spot or two, to show you where this is happening outside of Africa
as this has been done in Mongolia.

But you know what? Again, it’s the
givers and receivers. The givers—our youth and others in Mongolia as
they put up posters, they got the word out. They were unified. They came away
with a great blessing.

And then President Hinckley was
always saying to us, and President Monson since then, “Now, what percentage of
our own children are vaccinated?” Well, you can’t go give the message and not
have your own children vaccinated, so it’s been a great work. Mongolia, can
you see those twins? We don’t want to lose either one of those twins.

The Philippines has a lot of
strength to it and so we had a humanitarian couple that had worked in Africa go
in and do several days’ training, and then they had couples from all across the
Philippines that organized 10,000 young adults—10,000 like you—that did just
this. They put on a yellow vest that said, “Mormon Helping Hands,” and started
out to tell families with children to get the message out. And World Health and
many other organizations have come back and said, “We couldn’t have done it
without you. We can provide the vaccine, we can do surveillance, we can be
cautious, we can do everything. But if we don’t get the people out, we can’t be
successful.”

That’s just one of the things that
the Church has been involved with and it has been an exciting forum.

You know, I wanted to share with
you that a year ago, we saw the Ohio Midwest flooding. In the town of Findlay,
Ohio near Toledo we met Bishop Jones. He was a marvelous leader with vision. He
called on the leaders in Cleveland
to come in and help out. As they came in and began to pick up and clean up, one
man said to the group that was there, “You’re not from here, are you?”

They said, “No, we’re from the Cleveland area.”

He said, “You wouldn’t know that
I’m the Methodist minister in this town, would you?”

They said, “No, sir, we wouldn’t.”

He said, “But I lost something
special that I intended on reading—it was given to me by a couple of your young
men—in my flood. And I was wondering if any of you could get me another copy of
the Book of Mormon.” And then they worked and helped him and he said, “You
know, I am so impressed with you folks that I’ve got to ask for a Sunday off so
I can come to your meetings.”

They went to another place, and they
helped an elderly man clean his home, and as they came out they saw a flag in a
tree. With Scout training, those young men and the young women too said, “Let’s
retire the colors.” So they called the man out and they brought the flag,
tattered and torn, down and they pulled it out and folded it and put it into a
triangle and handed him his flag as the last thing they did. They said, “We all
left with tears in our eyes.”

I want to share with you just a
few of the other things that we’ve done in the last year. Peru, in the area of Pisco
about three hours south of Lima, had a devastating earthquake. Fifteen thousand
homes shook down within a few minutes. We are in the process of building 400
homes for Church members, where they’re doing a lot of work. But as soon as
this happened, Mrs. Garcia, the First Lady, had been here and toured the
Humanitarian Center and had attended General Conference. She got a hold of the
area presidency and wanted to know if we could provide some of the medical
supplies that she had seen at the Humanitarian
Center. So we flew in
medical supplies and hygiene kits. But the most marvelous thing again were the
members of the Church. Members of 23 stakes in Lima came out to help brothers
and sisters and neighbors and many others, first of all to make sure and rescue
all the survivors, then to help bury the dead, then to help them into
provisional tents and other shelters. And then, to rebuild homes with the few
dollars that are given by the Church and a lot of labor that is given by the
home recipients, making sure that it has the rebar and the other things that
are needed. You see the final product of stalwart, good members of the Church,
with a little home that had been rebuilt where they had lost their home. It’s
been a marvelous thing to see what we’ve done.

Some of you are from southern
California. You remember the fires, the devastating fires across San Diego and up in
Running Springs and up above San Bernardino
and other places. In the Poway California Stake, just to help out, they decided
they could make a sifter for all the families that lived—members and
nonmembers—within the confines of their stake, so that they could help them
sift through the ashes. It paid off. I was out where two sister missionaries
found a one-carat diamond in their sifting, and the woman was ecstatic to think
that it had been found.

Our youth had a great experience
as they did that. We distributed about 18,000 cleaning kits, and in that
cleaning kit are brushes and liquids and other items that are needed, and then
people were around right behind to help clean up. The wonderful experiences
that happened as this occurred. You know, one member of the Church said, “Our wonderful
volunteers shoveled, cut, carried, sorted, sifted, raked and swept. They did it
with smiling faces. Most were filthy, sufficiently sore and very wet. I thought
I knew the Saints. I’ve taken the sacrament with them. I’ve gone to the temple
with them. But now I know them.”

Who are you—the giver or the
receiver? That’s the missionaries from the California Carlsbad California
Mission. Can you see someone there you know? Is there someone here? Step up and
show us who it is. That’s exciting. I was showing this to a group that came out
to the Humanitarian
Center from BYU—Idaho, and one of the
sisters said, “Well, I’m there.” Right there. Our missionaries are absolutely
loved and appreciated and we get so many notes and thoughts.

You know, we hadn’t even finished
with the fires of California
and we had the flooding in Centralia,
Washington south of Tacoma. Again, the
cleaning kits, the volunteers that were out, the experiences that were there,
the mud, the filth. But there we were, involved in the excitement that went on.

And then we shift forward a little
bit and maybe you remember in the spring, the earthquake in China, and you
think, “China?
Can we help in China?”
Of course we can, and the Church wants to be there and the Brethren have the
vision and they approved it. The members from Hong Kong
all went down and across the border out of Hong Kong
and put together 10,000 living kits. And then these living kits, which are some
food and some other basic items that were put together, were transported into
the area of need. And when our priesthood leaders went into that part of China, they
were allowed to be there and to help with the distribution to the end of the
line. We didn’t do it for the TV camera that was there; we didn’t do it for any
other purpose than just reaching out to the individual need. It changes hearts.
It changes minds. It changes feelings. It helps those in need. It’s a win-win.

And then, more recently, we helped
with the 2008 hurricanes that we’ve gone through—Ike and the rest of the
family. Our chapels have become temporary bishop’s storehouses. Do we help
those who are not of our faith if they come to our door? Absolutely. At the
Pine Trails building in Houston,
we couldn’t get our truck unloaded and we had a line of people a block long. We
helped them all. We were there and provided other supplies. But again, we had
the volunteers that came and the missionaries that were involved. And as they
scrubbed and they helped, they made a difference. One set of missionaries told
me that in the Texas
Houston Mission
that as they finished their work, the wife said, “You just have made my husband
his happy 82nd birthday.” So they all stood around in their yellow
t-shirts and sang “Happy Birthday” to him.

Then at another place, they were
cleaning out on the perimeter of a property and a man came out. They asked
permission to come onto his property to clean, and they began to work away at
it. And then he came out with a pen and a pad of paper and he said, “I want all
of your names and all of your addresses. I just happen to be the mayor of Katy, Texas,
and I’m going to issue a proclamation recognizing the Mormons and the work you
have done in this community. And I want each of you missionaries to have a
personal copy of that proclamation.

And then another group of
missionaries said, “Well, we had an interesting experience. We asked a woman if
we could clean up her yard, and she looked us over and said, ‘Yes, if you will
pick up every twig and you will clean it perfectly.’ And they thought, ‘Boy,
she’s snippy. She’s difficult to deal with.’”

She went into the house and they
cleaned and they worked and then she came out and offered to pay them. She
thought she had hired them. And they said, “No. We’re missionaries. We’re just
here to help out.” And there was great satisfaction as that happened.

Just before I read President
Monson’s quote, Sandra and Don Barnes said, “The soap and towels and toothpaste
were such a welcome sight in Slidell,
Louisiana. Our friends who are
members of your church have always been there for us, but they couldn’t be this
time, so you came instead.”

And then another woman wrote. She
said, “I want to thank you for all you have done for us. The box of canned
goods was great. I just had soup and the Son is still shining.” Son, S-o-n.
Another person said, “I looked at the hygiene kit and I looked at the bar of
soap. I’m a Baptist. I wondered if I washed with it if I’d wash the Baptist off
of me and make me a Mormon.”

And then another person wrote,
“I’m speechless. God answered my prayer today. Tears rolled down my cheeks as
your church members cleaned away the debris. I’m a nurse. I’m used to giving,
not receiving. What they did reminded me of what Christ did for me on the cross.
I can’t convey my gratitude to you.”

So striving together we can feed
children, we can provide hope, we can preserve lives. And it again is that
adage, the great teaching of our Savior: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these…”—who have you done it unto?—“ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40)

I bear witness to you that the
work of reaching out to people around the world by the Church in a humanitarian
way by the members of the Church in a sweet, wonderful way, the donations that
come, the things that go out, make a difference. Thank you, each one of you,
for who you are. You’re here to prepare so that you can have those
opportunities of giving throughout life. But don’t forget as you’re here as
students that you can give, you can be a humanitarian. You can be kind to each
other. You can reach out to those that are in need. As you do so, you’ll feel better. Life will
be better, and your testimony of the Gospel will be strengthened.

I bear witness of the truthfulness
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of the prophetic calling of President Monson,
in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Introduction by Brent
Cherrington

It gives me a great deal of
pleasure today to introduce Brother Garry Flake. He is the director of
Humanitarian Emergency Response for the Church, and vice president of the
Latter-day Saint Charities. He lived in Latin America
for 11 years, which included serving as a mission president in Honduras and Mexico, as well
as the director of temporal affairs for the Church in Mexico.

Brother Flake and his wife, Janet,
have five children, and 11 grandchildren. Garry Flake, the director of
Humanitarian Emergency Response for the Church, will be speaking about the
Church humanitarian response to recent disasters. The Church has provided
humanitarian relief to needy individuals and families in 165 countries
throughout the world. Most recently, the Church emergency response has focused
on assisting individuals and families affected by flooding in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest
and Africa, the California wildfires, the Peru
earthquake, conflicts in Sudan,
Haiti
and the Dominican Republic.

How many of you here may have had
family in those affected areas, by a show of hands? Brother Flake.

LDS Business College (LDSBC) is located in downtown Salt Lake City, three blocks west of Temple Square.